PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Though I am not a polling expert, I have arrived at one, major reason why pollsters failed again to predict the outcome of the recent presidential election.  It is this:

Many respondents find it embarrassing to report they intended to vote for the clown in the Oval Office, one Donald Trump.

Or, in these days of aggressive social media, they were worried that, if they responded truthfully, their vote would somehow become public – and, however unlikely that was, they didn’t want to risk it.

From my post in the cheap seats in Salem, Oregon, this may just be a reflection of my antipathy for Trump.  How anyone would vote for him – or admit that they were going to, given his manifest indiscretions  — is beyond me.

Do I have evidence to support my contentions?  No. 

Overall, beyond my contentions, why did so many reputable pollsters — not the ones who engage in “push polling” to produce pre-determined outcomes – miss the mark again this year just as they did in the 2016 presidential election.

One analyst I read provided six reasons why the miss occurred, both in the presidential race, as well as in results for the U.S. House and U.S. Senate.

1. In the last few years, Republican voters seem to have become less willing to respond to polls.

2. This phenomenon isn’t simply about working-class whites.  Pollsters were careful to include more of these voters in their samples than four years ago, when the polls also missed, but it didn’t solve the problem. One likely reason: Even within demographic groups — say, independent, older, middle-income white women — people who responded to polls this year leaned more Democrat than people who did not.

3. It’s also not just about Trump. Polls missed in several Senate races even more than in the presidential race, which means they did an especially poor job of finding people who voted for Biden at the top and a Republican lower down the ballot.

4. Most of the easy solutions are probably not real solutions. Since Election Day, some campaign operatives have claimed their private polls were more accurate than the public polls.  That seems more false than true.  Biden, Trump and both parties campaigned as if their own polls matched the public polls, focusing on some states that were not really competitive and abandoning others that were close.

5. Polls have still been more accurate over the last four years than they were for most of the 20th century. As pollsters get more information about this year’s election and what went wrong, they will try to fix the problems, much as they did in the past. A new challenge:  In the smartphone age, poll response rates are far lower than they used to be.

6. Journalists can do a better job of conveying the uncertainty in polls.  Polls will never be perfect.  Capturing the opinions of a large, diverse country is too difficult.  And in today’s closely divided U.S., small polling errors can make underdogs look like favorites and vice versa. James A. Baker III, the nearly superhuman chief of staff to several past presidents, also showed up with analysis in the Wall Street Journal under this headline:

Good Grief, the Pollsters Got It Wrong

Twice they’ve predicted Democratic landslides only to look like blockheads when the votes are counted.

Here are excerpts of what he wrote:

“Too many opinion pollsters have come to resemble Lucy in the cartoon strip “Peanuts.”  Ahead of the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020, they held the political football in place to tee up certain Democratic victories.  But at the last second, the ball was pulled away and the entire country landed flat on its back when the Republican candidate fared much better than expected.

“It would be funny if it weren’t a sad reality that American democracy is being undermined by bad polling that consistently favors one side over the other.  Though not as ingrained in our national heritage as politicians and the press, polling is an important component in the governance of the nation, as it presents snapshots of the positions Americans take on the challenges that confront us.

“Elected leaders, candidates for public office and constituents often rely on polling as they make their choices on issues that affect the health of the nation.”

Accurate information, Baker added, “is critical to political discourse, and everyone loses when so many pollsters are consistently wrong. Polls that repeatedly favor one side create false expectations that adversely influence the actions of both sides.  The favored side becomes overconfident and suffers when the results on Election Day don’t meet expectations.  And the disfavored side is disadvantaged in both fundraising and voter turnout by the appearance that the outcome is foreordained.”

Baker proposes actions he believes could help the public discourse.

• Require reputable media outlets to avoid polling firms that do work for campaigns and others with political agendas.  The apparent conflict of interest in such arrangements deserves correction.  
• Consider congressional hearings to gather more information, though attempts to legislate and regulate polling would likely collide with First Amendment considerations, and so the options for regulation may be limited.
• Leave the solution in the hands of those whose livelihoods depend on opinion polling.  Pollsters and those who employ them need to take a serious look at the way polls are conducted. They need to re-examine how to collect a truly representative sample of voters, an admittedly difficult task in a world of new technology where landlines have mostly been replaced by cellphones and the Internet.  They also need to examine whether they are intentionally, knowingly or subconsciously letting their biases influence them.

A set of magic answers?  Of course not.

So, for the moment, the best response of individuals interested in politics – I am one – is to retain a healthy skepticism of polling.  Don’t rely on it totally.  Vote.  They wait for election results to produce the outcome that democracy demands.